Generally, a user searches for a desired keyword through an Internet search engine. For example, “Yahoo”, “AltaVista” and “Lycos” may be Internet search engines recently used most often. These search engines employ uniform category systems, an example of which will hereinafter be described.
First, if a client enters a Korean keyword “” (an English translation thereof may be “horse” or “language”) through a specific search engine, then the results of a search for the entered keyword are displayed on a browser of the client according to categories as follows:
. . .
health/medicine>disease/symptom>malaria
news/media>television>programs>drama
society/culture>religion/image>
religion>Christianity>sect
entertainment>music>write, composition>text, music
region>country>Guatemala
. . .
Accordingly, the user must select a specific one of the displayed categories on the basis of a meaning of the Korean keyword “” and then search the selected category for a desired text. On the other hand, provided that the selected category is too large to be displayed on one screen picture, the user will conduct a search process using a scroll on the browser, and, upon recognizing that the selected category is not a desired one, the user will return to a previous picture. In other words, existing display methods for search engines display the results of searches one-dimensionally, resulting in an inconvenience in changing between previous and next pictures.
A different display method is disclosed in Korean Patent Laid-open Publication No. 1999-0048712, entitled “MAP-TYPE CLASSIFICATION SEARCH METHOD FOR INTERNET INFORMATION SEARCH”, and shown in FIG. 1 herein.
FIG. 1 is a view showing a browser picture for illustration of the map-type classification search method. If a client enters a keyword to be searched for, then the results of a search for the entered keyword are displayed while being classified by regions, types, holding organizations and other categories about the entered keyword. Hence, the user selects a specific one of the displayed categories. The selected category is recognized as one keyword and the searched results are thus displayed according to other categories related to the selected category, similarly to the above browser picture.
The above-mentioned map-type classification search method is desirable to display the results of search by categories about a specific keyword, but has a disadvantage in that a clicked one of the categories has no link to a subsequent browser picture, leading to a degradation in search efficiency. This search method further displays no rate or number of accesses to each category. For this reason, the user may undesirably gain access to a site with a low frequency, resulting in an increase in search time.